Post by Eddie Love on Jul 4, 2011 10:39:56 GMT -5
There are very few films about the American Revolution and not many fine ones and I don’t think a single great one. (Though I‘m a sucker for the musical 1776.) Of course, there are tons of Oscar-laden films about British monarchs as, I guess, the British have a long history of dramatic portraits of their leaders that Americans don’t, plus the nature of monarchical rule may be more intrinsically dramatic. Maybe. In any event, it does seem Hollywood’s is skittish about making films about American History and one of the reasons may be the spectacular failure of 1985’s strange and ugly REVOLUTION.
The film follows a Colonial father (Al Pacino) who, with his one remaining son, operates a little commercial boat along the Hudson. When war breaks out in the colonies the boat is commandeered and, hoping to aid the pair’s finances, the boy enlists in the American army. Unable to get the kid freed from his enlistment the father joins alongside him. Together over the course of the war father and son fight and flee, lose and find each a few times over and manage to keep tabs on the rebellious beauty from a Tory family (Nastaja Kinski) who they invariably and improbably keep running into.
Hugh Hudson who helmed the Best Picture Oscar winner CHARIOTS OF FIRE directed this film. He seems singularly interested in creating a sense of the turbulent period and does so by making the action relentlessly chaotic, particularly in the opening city scenes. The teeming crowds never take a breath, they’re constantly in motion and everyone is yelling at the same time. (And were North American cities at that time even as densely populated as we see here? The people are wall-to-wall.)
Like the HBO mini-series of JOHN ADAMS, (also directed by a Brit) the Americans are seen as a feral rabble, but this film goes a step further and in the opening scenes they’re positively animalistic. The British and their Colonial loyalists may seem foolish or foppish, but at least they’re civilized; the Americans we see – nearly to a man – are beastial. I guess the point is to re-set our expectations for a more cynical take on this hallowed point in American history. But there’s no dramatic pay-off. When the thin plot unfolds it’s pretty boilerplate, there’s nothing new or interesting, only now we feel the melodramatics are set amid people we’ve seen displayed with a nihilistic condescension and disregard. They may be fighting for a cause, but the film says everyone’s looking out for themselves.
At the time of this picture Pacino was coming off two controversial critical and commercial disappointments – CRUISING and SCARFACE. (Funny to reflect, SCARFACE was considered a bust at the time of its release.) I can’t imagine why he gravitated towards this role. He’s tentative through the whole film and largely unintelligible. I was never sure what his accent was. He has one effective scene where he nurses his feverish son, but, by and large, he’s simply vacant. I can’t think of another epic built around a star-turn that delivers so little. I never bought into him as his character – I always thought “Yeah, that’s Al Pacino.” He would remain off the screen for four years following this movie's failure.
Others in the cast include 80s It Girl Nastaja Kinski as a young British woman (?!?) enraptured with the revolutionary cause despite the disapproval of her family, anxious to pimp her out to British officers. The scenes of this family drama are particularly absurd. Kinski is like Cinderella with two mink-encased wicked sisters. Yet, these are some of the only dramatically coherent scenes in the film – clearly Hudson is more comfortable in this milieu than that of the balance of the story. However here and elsewhere Kinski is just lost – she’s totally miscast. (And watching this in HD didn’t do any favors to this star once considered, like, the hottest woman alive. Still a beauty, though, I loved her as a kid and always will.)
Donald Sutherland shows up as a British captain who tangles with father and son over the war. He strikes a menacing figure, but there’s no believable motivation for this thin character. Eurhythmics’ Annie Lennox also appears briefly in the opening as a sort American Madame DeFarge egging the crowd on to seize Pacino’s boat. And ROCKY HORROR’s Richard O’Brien plays an effeminate suitor to Kinski’s sisters.
In the second half of the film Pacino becomes like a Forrest Gump of the founding era, he seems to be Johnny on the spot at a number of pivotal events. In these later scenes they suddenly posit the notion of a grand romance between Al and Nastaja that is wholly incredible. The two have no chemistry whatsoever and their interactions have been so fleeting. And this asks the audience to switch gears mightily as up to now the film’s muddy and bloody take has seemed so unsentimental.
The film isn’t a complete waste. There’s a really good musical score and a few of the battle scenes are certainly effective, particularly the first skirmishes which the Americans lose with many deserting. You get a sense this is what this kind of close fighting would have actually been like. (Unfortunately, I can’t believe the tiny balls shot from muskets felled men in their tracks as we see here. Dozens of them are hit and immediately just drop dead. You’d expect most would be writhing in pain and dying, but not killed instantly.) But in these scenes and later, you get some really impressive images and shots.
If you go to the Met in New York and see all the early American paintings, they include a lot of these giant canvases capturing sylvan landscapes of vast green, mountain and sky, possibly with some small figure depicted in the foreground as well. That’s a sense a lot of the later scenes in this movie captures well. This includes a momentarily arresting sequence where Pacino and his son are stalked by Native American scouts aiding the British that’s followed by a weak pay-off.
Also, being as this is an epic film from the 80s, cinematic virtuosity must be evidenced through a long, ostentatious tracking shot and we get a pretty impressive example of this showy conceit towards the very end.
But, look, the bottom line is this film for most of its running time is simply boring, it by no means entertains. There may be some daring ambitions in the mix, but the story is too thin. In the end this isn’t nearly as good as the violent yet sentimental melodrama THE PATRIOT that Mel Gibson starred in some years later.